


The Boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne

by NP_Complete



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Pete's World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 02:05:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NP_Complete/pseuds/NP_Complete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How did Pete Tyler go from the man we saw in Father's Day to the man we saw in the Pete's World episodes in only twenty years?  Pete Tyler tells his story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne

In 1984 I was working for a consumer electronics shop.  I liked it.  I wore a suit every day -- I thought I was so flash!  But the punters seemed to like it.  I was good at it, sales.  

But that was a bad year for the markets, economy was down, whatever Thatcher was saying, and we had a bad Christmas season.  That’s death for a retailer, a bad Christmas season.  Plus, my manager had a nephew who was just leaving school.  

In those days if you were unemployed for more than six months, and you were a bloke under twenty-nine without other claims on you, you were conscripted into the Territorial Army.  It was Year Five of the Third General Emergency, we were still until curfew, and they still wanted blokes with guns on every street corner.  

So my boss’s nephew got my job, I got the boot, and six months later I joined the Terry Army with the other rags and remnants.  The boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne, like in the song.

The first thing I noticed was that the food wasn’t as bad as everybody said it was.  The second was that they gave us a lot of tests.  They gave us aptitude tests, and reading tests, and vision tests.  And they came back and called out a lot of names and said that those blokes would be taking another lot of tests.  Which were just like the first tests, as far as I could tell.  

They warned us before we took them that whoever did worst would be on permanent latrine duty.  I think now that was to discourage anybody who thought that by doing badly he’d be flagged as unfit for duty and kicked back to civilian life.  

I knew I’d done badly on the first lot of tests.  I’d always done badly on tests.  I knew I’d done worse on the second lot.  I could just tell.  

So the next day someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Doctor wants to see you.”  So I went to see the doctor.

He asked me if I were Peter Allen Tyler and I said yes.  Yes, sir.  Then he handed me a card, and said, “Read that. Out loud.”

So I did.  And I could tell I was in trouble, because what I was reading didn’t make any sense.  

He looked at me, hard, and said, “Do you know what “indifferently” means, Tyler?”

And I said, “Yes, it means to do things like you don’t care.  Like you don’t care how they come out.”

And he said, “Do you know what “impartially” means?”

And I said, “Yeah, it means to not take sides.”

And he said, “What’s three times 449?”

And that took me a minute, but I got it.  And he asked me a couple of other questions like that.  They were easy because I was always having to calculate prices in the shop.

And the doctor said, “You thought I was going to tell you you were too dim to be in the Army, didn’t you?”

And I said, “Yeh-yes sir.”

“Because people have been calling you dim all your life, haven’t they?”

“A no-hoper,” I agreed, getting into the swing of things.

“Well, I’m not going to,” he said.  “You’re a lot sharper than you know.  Your verbal skills are good, your maths skills are good, your skills for anything written are abysmal.  They’re so bad, in fact, that you were flagged for my attention.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but I was starting to get hopeful.  

“I think you have dyslexia,” he said.  And of course I didn’t know what that was.  I thought it was some kind of brain tumor.  I started thinking how upset my Mum would be.  And Jackie - if I died without giving her an engagement ring, she’d murder me.  

“That’s not a disease,” said the doctor.  “It’s a condition.  It means you have a lot of trouble with written words and numbers.  But it doesn’t mean you’re dim.  It means you need a teacher who knows what he’s doing.”

And I just stood there, feeling stunned.

“I’m going to send you to a training course,” he said.  “They’ll teach you how to figure out what a written word really is and how to tell when you’ve got it wrong.  With practice, you can get almost as fast as a normal reader.”

And I just stood there, still stunned.  All my life I’d thought I was too stupid for school.  I’d learned to read people, get on with people, because that was my only stock in trade.  But now that was going to change.

“You’re dismissed, Tyler,” said the doctor, “Enjoy the Army.”  And I backed out of there, saluting.  

And you know what?  I did enjoy the Army.  Not the standing about, shifting a gun from shoulder to shoulder, trying to look like I would actually be willing to shoot somebody, but the people side of the army.  Keeping morale up.  Figuring out what was wrong with somebody or why something had happened, and who had done it.

I might have stayed in, after my two years were up, even, except that Jackie wanted to get married, and I wanted to start my own business.  By then I thought I could do it.  I could always hire people to do the really tricky things, but I could read well enough by then that I didn’t think I could be completely fooled by impressive-looking papers.  I used to think how I’d protect my business, how I’d get one lawyer to read what another lawyer had written.  

And I married Jackie, and I found this tiny company called Vitex, and I thought, “This could do it.  But I don’t want just to be their best salesman.  I want to _own_ it,” and I formed a syndicate to buy out the company.  

And I did, and you know all the rest.  

**Author's Note:**

> I'd always wondered how Pete Tyler went from the man we saw in "Father's Day" to the man we saw in Pete's World in only twenty years. What made such a difference in his life? And why had a man with so much potential had such difficulty getting his life started?


End file.
